M. Clyne

“Students must know how to write, because science demands written expression. The goal of scientific research is publication. The scientist must not only “do” science, he must “write” science. … A scientific paper is primarily an exercise in organization with distinctive and clearly evident component parts. Good organization is a key to good writing. If the ingredients are properly organized, the paper will virtually write itself.” (from R. Day, “How to write and publish a scientific paper”, 1979, pp. 4-62).

Part 1.

DEFINITIONS, ILLUSTRATIONS, EXAMPLES

Abstracts. Annotations. Theses.

An abstract is usually defined as a brief overview of the key points of an article, report or proposal. The purpose of an abstract is giving the reader as much information as possible in as few words as possible. The word limit of an abstract (including a bibliography or examples, if needed) must be no more than 150 words. No special form or format is needed for submitting an abstract.

Selected examples of abstracts from “Scientific American”, 1995, v. 270-273, NN. 1-5.

Jamison, Kay Redfield. “Manic-depressive illness and creativity”: Recent studies have shown a link between creativity and mood disorders such as maniac-depressive illness and major depression. The connection is examined, and cases like Lord Tennyson, Vincent van Gogh and Robert Schumann are highlighted.

McCloskey, Donald. “An economic uncertainty principle”. Economists claim to know the next month’s interest rates, yet they are not rich. Their claim is also a claim that others in the market do not know the future of the interest rates. The economic uncertainty principle is examined.

Mukerjee, Madhursee,”About face”. A quick means of reproducing the unique contours of a person’s face from a snapshot into a 3D face has been developed. This discovery by computer scientists may revolutionize the treatment of burn victims.

Piel, Gerard. “AIDS and population “control”. The proposition that AIDS has arrived in time to stop the population explosion is discussed. Even the projected AIDS deaths would not be nearly enough to stop the population growth.

Bulgakova O.V. “Image Economical Discourse on the Newspaper” (on the example of texts published in Business Supplement to the local newspaper “Krasnoe Znamja”. The specific character of image economical discourse is investigated. Image materials are classified according to the purpose of their creation and methods of image creation are considered.

An abstract is not always easily distinguished from an annotation, since both these genres of scientific writing present concise statements of the key ideas in a text or portion of a text or a brief description of a book or article, and both are of approximately the same length (100 – 150 words).

Furthermore, both are commonly referred to as «аннотация» in Russian, which makes differentiation between the two even more confusing. Yet, there is an essential difference between the an annotation and an abstract which consists in the fact that an annotation is usually defined as a сritical or explanatory note, a commentary added to a text and making part of the text. It usually precedes the book or article, its purpose being to characterize a publication in such a way that the reader can decide whether or not to read the complete work. An annotation should briefly:

• (re)-establish the topic of the research project;

• give the research problem and/or main objective of the project (this

usually comes first);

• indicate the methodology used;

• present the main findings;

• present the main conclusions.

For illustration, read the following article and look at the sample annotation given below.